


The J'harian Fingertrap

by TaFuilLiom



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21924115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaFuilLiom/pseuds/TaFuilLiom
Summary: The tingling of the argument and the smell of leftover takeout swirled around Maggie’s head, fogging up her conscience until it too snapped away and she had perfect clarity. She straightened up as Alex looked down at their joined hands.Or, the one where Alex and Maggie get their fingers stuck in a fingertrap.
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer
Comments: 15
Kudos: 122
Collections: Secret Sanvers | A Sanvers Winter Holiday 2019 Event





	The J'harian Fingertrap

**Author's Note:**

> AU post-2x07 in which Alex and Maggie tried to be friends. I hope you enjoy, Vianca :)

She didn’t have time to question whether it was the right or the wrong decision. There was only a decision to be made, so she made it.

She leapt out of the window. 

She caught her bicep on the chipped window frame, the scratch stinging as she rattled down the fire escape storey by storey. The suspect was fast, but she had endured a lifetime of running, and kept pace. 

“Police!” she yelled, spiralling down the stories until they hit the dirty brick alleyway. 

The suspect glanced over his shoulder, losing his balance, but continued on. Her feet thumped and thumped against the dirt as she gained ground, finally getting close enough to lunge forward and tackle him down. 

Catching him off guard, she got an elbow to the face for her trouble. While she railed back at the explosion of pain, she drove her knee forward and pinned him onto the ground. Blood, hot and thick slipped from the end of her nose as she secured his wrists at his tailbone and yanked her handcuffs off her belt. 

“You’re bleeding all over me!” he complained.

“Well, serves you right for cracking my nose,” she grumbled, slinging the cuffs around his wrists and tightening. 

She was no stranger to the occasional brawl, more often than not a suspect swung. Still, her throbbing nose reminded her, even Detective Sawyer got caught off guard.

The case was routine: a string of liquor store robberies involving extraterrestrial guns. No one had been hurt and there was no body count, so it wasn’t anything that would warrant a DEO response. The two suspects they had arrested - well, one caught outright and the other chased into this alley - had been dressed in elf outfits. Given the booming malls and bouncing parties around the city on a Saturday night, their costumes blended in with other such characters. 

She handed the suspect off to two officers, dabbing at her wet nose with her wrist. Trying not to smear blood on her phone, she lowered the brightness and tapped out a message:

_ Got him. _

Thirty seconds later, it pinged: 

**Danvers:** _ Great! _

_ Picking up your scraps is what I do.  _

**Danvers:** _ But we appreciate it.  _

Bathed in the blue police lights and the concentrated effort to reply, she almost missed the call from over her shoulder. Maggie turned to see Officer Priestley leaning against the open door of her cruiser. 

“Sawyer,” she said, “C’mere, I got  _ strips _ .”

Maggie didn’t have to be told twice. Priestley was half-Gnarvor, a planet of advanced healers. Her first aid kit was not approved by any human authority, but it was enviable for those in the know. With blonde hair neatly pulled back in a ponytail and a girl-next-door attitude, most superiors thought butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and would therefore never suspect the golden girl broke the rules for her fellow officers once in a while. 

She gestured for Maggie to sit in the backseat facing outwards and circled around to the trunk. As Priestley rummaged around, Maggie ignored her pulsing nose and chanced her luck. 

_ Pool tonight?  _

The response came quickly. 

**Danvers:** _ Can’t tonight, sorry Sawyer. _

“Damn,” Maggie muttered.

“Hot date turn you down?” Priestley asked, snapping on a pair of white gloves and hunching down. She glanced around at the other officers mulling around and then popped open the innocent looking first aid kit, stocked with alien contraband. She selected two strips which Maggie knew would have any break or fracture in her nose healed by sunset tomorrow. 

“Yeah, actually.” She tried to sniff and winced at the pain that rocketed up her forehead. 

_ I’m not used to being stood up,  _ she typed, glancing at Priestley shimmying the strips out of plastic packaging,  _ Got a hot date tonight? _

“Now,” Priestley said gravely, raising a carefully crafted eyebrow, “You remember the setting period?”

Maggie’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, yeah. Two minutes,  _ snap _ .”

“Be ready.”

“I won’t be.”

Priestley chuckled and leaned up. Maggie flinched as she pressed the strips over the affected areas. One, two. Blood, tepid, grew itchy and flaky on her hands. She looked down and watched Alex type, three dots appearing, disappearing, and reappearing. They bounced, and bounced, and finally produced a response far too short: 

_ Yeah _ .

“For God’s sake, Sawyer, could you not bleed over my backseat?” Priestley grumbled, snapping off her gloves. 

Maggie frowned as a packet of tissues were thrown in her lap. She got up from the back seat, shaking a single tissue from the packet and holding it to her nostrils. Alex had never canceled on her before. 

“Those strips should have you all fixed in a day,” Priestley explained, closing her first aid kit. Her blonde ponytail swung as she closed the trunk and the back door, “But you know that.”

Maggie stared over the top of the cruiser across the street, where Christmas parties were teeming in the bar windows, men and women in Santa hats and reindeer antlers spilling out into the street. Music with bells and cheers drifted across to her. 

“Thanks,” she muttered, coming back to herself and indicating the bloody tissue and strips.

“No problem.” Priestley crossed her arms over her chest. “Any plans tonight?”

With no pool, she was probably going to go back to the precinct and bury herself in some cases. She shook her head. “You?”

Priestley grinned. “Meeting someone for a drink.”

“Another one?”

The officer clucked her tongue. “This one gets to know about the alien part.” 

This drew Maggie’s attention to a sharp focus. She lowered her tissue. “That soon?”

“She works in the business.” Priestley tapped the NCPD badge on her shoulder as she walked backwards. “Oh, and Sawyer? Two minutes is almost up.”

For a detective, Maggie was ashamed she didn’t put two and two together much faster than she did. But by the time she did, her nose began to tingle.

“Oh, sh-”

_ SNAP! _

~

Staring into the shiny walls of the DEO elevator, Maggie toyed with the strips on her nose. While the snap had fixed any immediate bone damage, it would still take most of the day to heal. As it was, there was some purple bruising around the bridge, but not the worst state she had ever been in. 

In the midst of her stewing last night, she had received a text from Winn letting her know that her clearance had been approved and Alex had signed off on her to get access to confiscated alien tech. Being able to observe some of the items the DEO had picked up on recent raids would be potentially useful for her current stack of unsolved cases. 

The elevator pinged and she spotted Winn, deflated against his high-backed chair. He swung aimlessly by the DEO monitors. She gripped her cardboard coffee holder and strode out towards him. Aware that he had spent most of the night logging and processing the tech for her visit, she figured he deserved a treat. 

She set down the holder and lifted out his coffee. “Extra shot for your best endeavours.”

“Well hell-oh!” He sat up straighter and waved vaguely around his nose area. 

“Better not.”

He hissed as he studied the bruising, but heeded her advice. Instead, he pulled his coffee towards him. “Ah, sweet, sweet caffeine.” He took a sip, hummed, and stretched. Then he bounded up out of the chair, leaving it swinging in his wake. “Okay, lemme show you the toy room.”

She followed him without comment, but did a sweep of the room and successive corridors for Alex. Winn swiped his badge near a solid metal door, and with a triple beep, they went inside. While she trusted him and trusted that she had her approval, she wasn’t entirely comfortable being in the secured room with the embargoed alien tech without Alex. It felt too much like walking into someone’s house without asking. 

“Where’s Danvers?” she asked. 

Winn wheeled around on his heel as he made sure everything was in its right place. “She’s running late.”

Maggie looked at the lamp-lit table, the dozen objects. Her stomach twisted as she took in the three guns and paraphernalia. Winn had written up cue cards beside each one with planet origins, connected case files in the DEO database, and other information he had found useful.

But the details were a wash. All Maggie could think about was Priestley’s grin, her reputation for charming women into bed. And Alex… 

“This is great,” she said, tongue thick and dry in her mouth. She felt sick. “I waded through the mess of case files last night so this should streamline at least one investigation.”

“Hopefully,” he said.

They had been friends. They had agreed to be. That’s what Maggie said she wanted. She encouraged and cajoled her new friend to explore her sexuality, but not with her. 

That was what she wanted, wasn’t it?

When Alex did arrive, albeit another seventeen minutes later - not that Maggie was counting - she seemed a touch haywire. She was deliberately too chirpy, too bright, as if she wanted to go back to bed but didn’t want Maggie to think that. 

“Hey,” she said, propping her hands on her hips and nodding at the table, “Winn did a great job.”

“He did.”

“I should authorise an extra day off for him as a thank you.” Alex circled the table and glanced over the equipment as if trying to memorise it. She was poised as if at any moment an object might leap off onto the floor. “I’m gonna check scheduling and reallocate his routine work load.”

“That’s nice of you.” 

For the next ten minutes they talked through the tech. Alex was too hyper, too engaged, trying to mask the lack of sleep that Maggie could see in her face. She reached the final object, an emerald tube-like piece which was hollow in the middle. She peered through the hole through the piece. 

“What do you know about Glob-J’harians?” she asked.

Maggie imagined the twin planets. “Globs are big on truth. Don’t know much about J’harians. You?”

“Yeah, that’s it.” Alex set the tube back on the table. “We’ve never come across one.”

Picking up the cue card that Winn had provided, Maggie read off the information. “Says here there were J’harian records in Fort Rozz, but they weren’t complete.”

“Which makes me wonder where this came from.” Alex poked at the spongey-outer shell of the tube, then moved backwards down the line. She listed a million details, and Maggie noticed one million more; the pout of her lip holding a weapon, the experience and assurance of her touch, the rasp of her voice murmuring her observations. 

By the time she returned to the J’harian object, Maggie’s stomach had still to untwist itself. There was a bounce in Alex’s step, an occasionally sly grin, as if there was a secret Maggie couldn’t be let in on. 

She was well aware that underneath her efforts to respect Alex’s ‘newness’, there was an underbelly of feeling that she suppressed. Most of the time, she had a handle on it. But now, tectonic plates crunched against each other in her stomach. She recognised this behaviour, knew exactly the sort of  _ behaviour _ that prompted it. 

She didn’t want to ask about the date, didn’t want to know about Alex taking home another woman. 

But they were friends.  _ Just _ friends. And that’s what Maggie wanted. 

“So how was it?”

Alex looked up from a strange looking gun. “Hm?”

“The date.” The words were foreign on her tongue. 

Alex ducked her head. “It was...nice. She was nice.”

_ Nice.  _ Benign description on its own. Yet Alex didn’t say the date was nice, the food was nice, the atmosphere was nice.  _ She _ was nice. Priestley, who had a reputation that made Maggie seem like a saint.

“Officer Priestley, huh?”

Alex’s cheeks reddened under the lamps. “How did you know?”

“Fixed this for me yesterday.” Maggie pointed at the nose strips. “Did you know she’s half-Gnarvor?”

“I did.” 

_ You sleep with her? _ Maggie wanted to ask, she bit her tongue instead. 

“I still...I want to see her again. I think this could really work.” Alex rubbed the back of her neck. She looked like she wanted to divulge more but something faded, as if she grew too embarrassed.

Split between wanting to encourage her to talk about her attraction to women and not wanting to hear a single word of what Alex and Priestley did together, she chose a neutral, no man’s land position. Closing the conversation, but gently. “Good for you, Danvers. I’m happy for you.” 

Alex just shrugged, but the hint of a smile sunk Maggie’s heart. 

“And you,” Alex asked, “Anyone on your radar?”

Those tectonic plates grated against one another, threatening an earthquake. But as she had been doing since Alex kissed her, she suppressed it.

“Nah.”

Maggie looked at the J’harian object. It reminded her of the old Chinese finger traps kids would play with. She had a criminal psychology professor who on their first day of class told an allegory about being stuck in the justice system. He got a volunteer to help him demonstrate with the trap. The students, herself included, lapped it up. 

She later found out that it had just been away for him to seduce students. He would repeat the trick every semester, choosing the prettiest girl he would try and groom. Maggie had dated the TA, who complained about how leechy it was and warned her to be under no illusions about the act. 

Maggie picked up the J’harian object, fitted one end of the hollow tube to her forefinger. Then she held it up and waggled her eyebrows. 

“Could be dangerous,” Alex warned.

“Could be.”

Maggie thought of that professor seducing his students, about that TA girlfriend who’d complained. 

_ “Stupid seduction trick anyway.” _

Alex rolled her eyes, but wiggled her finger into the other end. The two of them stood there grinning, ridiculous, and then Maggie pulled back. 

Sure enough, the tube tightened like a trap. With a snort, she steadied Alex’s hand and tried to free them. But even as she pushed their fingers together, the trap held. 

Alex’s gaze darted down to the trap, then back to Maggie. 

They were stuck. 

~

They sat on high stools in Alex’s lab, their joined fingers resting between them. They had tried several kinds of soap, lubricants, and even a slippery alien solution that Alex was sure would do the trick, but no joy. 

Alex’s touch had been delicate and measured to begin, despite one hand being incapacited, but she grew increasingly rushed and desperate. Now they sat, defeated at the bench, their skin slightly raw.

“It’s my precinct office party tonight,” Maggie said, “Not that I’m one for office parties.”

“Oh.” Alex squinted in concentration as she worked to get the stopper out of the latest solution bottle without dislodging their joints. She wiggled her finger up and down, wiggling Maggie’s with it. “Guess I’m attending too.”

Maggie looked at the emerald tube binding their fingers. 

_ “Stupid seduction trick anyway.” _

She swallowed. “Hey, maybe Officer Priestley will be there.”

Alex’s eyes lit up as she got the stopper out without spilling any solution, then carefully dabbed some of it onto her knuckle. “Maybe she will.”

“You can steal away under the mistletoe.”

The solution dribbled down Alex’s hand. Maggie watched the droplet’s movements as the other woman didn’t answer. She was tense in her step stool. Their attempts to break free from the J’harian tube that their fingers were lodged inside had jerked them closer and further away in a rag-doll dance. It was only now, her heart thudding in her throat with the proximity of their bodies, that she realised she had been orbiting each other at arms’ length since their kiss. 

Now, they didn’t have any choice but to be close. 

Maggie resorted to what she knew best: deflective jokes. “Though, whatever you two decide to do in a supply closet, just know you’re in a place full of detectives.” She tipped her head. “If you leave your underwear, it will get back to you.”

Alex looked like she was about to refute that, but simply shoved the stopper back into the bottle of solution instead. 

After another varied cycle of trying to free themselves, they still had no luck. Maggie’s phone vibrated with a reminder to log her paperwork from the arrests the night before. 

“Shoot,” she mumbled. It was what she intended to do after her tech observation. “I gotta go back to the precinct and send off documents about last night.”

Alex looked at her, then her phone, then their joined fingers. 

“To the precinct it is.”

~

With the Christmas party that night, the place was decked with decorations. Streamers hung from the ceiling, giant snowflakes spun in every corner with some rookies’ names on them. Auxiliary staff and cops alike were singing to Christmas music on the radio, tacking more tinsel to the walls, wearing santa hats and elf ears. 

Given the commotion and jolly spirit, she and Alex managed to sneak through to the SciDiv department unnoticed. While she said her greetings to those they passed, no one seemed to mind that her and Alex’s fingers were stuck together with a green tube. 

By the time they stumbled into the SciDiv bullpen Maggie’s shoulder was aching. Her joints were growing weary and stiff from holding the same position and having to drag Alex behind her. 

Detective Daughtry had his boots up on his desk, and wolf whistled when he saw them. “What came first, the nose or the ex?” He tipped his head, scratching at his beard. “Or is the nose because she’s your ex?”

“She’s not my ex.” Maggie reached her desk, ignoring the uncomfortable shift of Alex beside her in favour of rubbing at the strips on her nose. When he raised his hands out, asking for more explanation of why Alex was there, she showed him their fastened fingers. 

“Oh,” he said, pretending to be confused, bushy eyebrows knitting together, “Isn’t this the one you promised you weren’t gonna finger?”

Maggie huffed and lifted their fingers so she could ungracefully navigate both her and Alex around to the back of her desk. “Every day you creep closer to getting a call from HR, you know that, Daughtry?”

When she fell back into her desk chair, Alex protested with a hiss. Maggie looked up, softening. “Sorry.”

Alex shrugged. “S’okay. You didn’t get me into this situation.”

Maggie saw the way she bit her lower lip, the flutter of her lashes, the gait of her stance: she wasn’t so sure about that. 

_ “Stupid seduction trick anyway.” _

She struggled to type as she finished logging and sending her case files into the database. Fidgeting, Alex picked up a snowglobe on her desk and shook it, seeing the snow scattering around the Santa Claus in the middle.

“Don’t break that,” she warned.

Alex put it back down. “Sorry.”

“It’s from the Rainbow Project. Kids gave it to me.” Maggie clenched her hands, but retracted her fists after Alex’s grunt of discomfort from the jolt to their fingers. “Shit. I promised to swing by there before tonight.”

“You’re going? I didn’t think you were one for office parties.”

She wasn’t, usually. But she wanted to get drunk, to get Priestley and Alex out of her mind. She didn’t think it was a good idea to do that alone. 

She hit enter on the keyboard. “Back to the DEO to solve this.” 

But when they were leaving the bullpen, Maggie spotted Priestley near the elevators. She used their joint fingers to swing Alex around in the opposite direction.

“Hey-!” Alex cried.

“Just remembered something,” she lied, bringing out her phone and pretending to search. 

Luckily, Alex received a genuine alert on her phone. She hit dial and waited. Maggie cut her attention between Alex on the phone and Priestley hovering by the elevators. 

“Hey, Winn?” Alex said, “Good news. You’ve got authorised leave tomorrow…”

Priestley was laughing with Sally Hock from Narcotics, reaching over to fix the sparkling antlers on her head. Maggie narrowed her eyes as Priestley leaned close and said something to make Sally laugh and shove at her shoulder. 

“...It’s fine, no...no, thank you, honestly...you too.”

Maggie’s jaw clenched as Sally walked away, Priestley staring after. Then the officer took out her phone and began to type. No sooner had Alex hung up and lowered the phone from her ear than it lit up with a message: 

**Kim Priestley:** _ Had a great time last night. Can’t wait to see you again. ;) _

“Hey, hope we can get this off soon,” Maggie said, motioning to the J’harian piece connecting them still, “I think you’re gonna need this.”

Alex looked up, then back at her text, and then spluttered. She glanced around as if anyone around them could have picked up on the meaning of her joke. 

Maggie plastered a smile on her face like make up, a theatre mask, hiding the disgust that simmered inside. She had let Alex go in order to give her a chance at someone better, a chance at happiness, and Alex had slept with someone who was on a collision course to hurt her even more. A flirt, a cheat. 

Someone better.

“Come on,” she said, “Let’s lose our dignity by trying to use the bathroom.”

~

Take out boxes littered the bench. Sun was down, morale was low, and they had grown sharper with each other as the frustration and panic set it. Alex was a bioengineer, cycling through dozens of theories, the DEO database and all the resources at her disposal. 

Yet here they were, still stuck together. 

Maggie’s boots tapped at the metal bar on the stool. The precinct party had kicked off just under two hours ago. Alex ignored another notification from Priestley. It was the second text in ten minutes, and Maggie couldn’t help but pry. 

“You’re gonna leave a lady on read?”

“Can’t reply with one hand,” Alex said, not taking her attention away from her laptop screen, “And I need to focus on this. You should too.”

Put off by how short Alex was being with her, Maggie replied, “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to have to third wheel any future dates.”

Alex’s attention wavered. She looked over, eyes flat. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“No wonder you were so tired today. She takes everyone to bed on the first date, even newbies.”

“You know what?” Alex rallied back, spinning in her stool. “That’s pretty rich coming from you.”

The frustration of the day, at herself, at Priestley, bubbled over. “What’s  _ that _ supposed to mean?” she echoed. 

“About the treatment of newbies?” Alex scoffed. “You know exactly what I mean.” 

“I didn’t lead you on, Alex.”

“I’m not trying to say-” Alex shut the lid of her laptop, facing Maggie fully now. “I don’t understand why you’re acting like this. You told me to come out and explore, right?” 

She tried to wave her hand around as she spoke, but ended up just yanking their bodies together. 

“I did. I just-”

“You’ve been making all these comments.”

“Alex-”

“I thought you’d be happy and supportive!”

“I  _ am  _ happy for you.”

Her voice wobbled, splitting with the lie. Alex’s nostrils flared. 

“Try and be convincing next time.”

I just…” Maggie sought to bring down the temperature. “I don’t want you to get hurt when she finds another plaything. I know what she’s like, her reputation.”

“Yeah?” Alex looked away, nipping her lower lip and shaking her head. “Maybe that’s exactly what I’m looking for. Someone who will actually  _ want _ me.”

“The issue was never-” 

“You’re being an asshole.”

“Because I’m-”

_ “Stupid seduction trick anyway.” _

Maggie closed her eyes as her train of thoughts derailed. She liked Alex, hadn’t wanted to break Alex’s heart. But thinking of Alex with anyone else, physically or emotionally, threatened to break her own. 

The tectonic plates pushed, pushed, and with a snap, an earthquake struck:

“I’m jealous,” she finally admitted. 

The atmosphere was amniotic with the hush of machines and whirring of computers. Activity existed on the floors above and below them, but here they shared a sacred place. 

“Why?” Alex asked, vulnerable, “Maggie, you told me-”

“I did. I told you to spread your wings and take off, be free. Enjoy this new you.” Maggie looked at the emerald J’harian trap between their fingers. “And I’m here on the ground imagining…”

Imagining Alex and Priestley, Alex and her, what they could have been in a dozen different scenarios. 

She hung her head. “It’s selfish. I’m sorry.”

The trap tightened imperceptibly. Alex’s face twisted, her voice trembling, “I knew today you thought we- that I slept with her. But I didn’t,” she admitted. “I just...didn’t correct you.”

The tingling of the argument and the smell of leftover takeout swirled around Maggie’s head, fogging up her conscience until it too snapped away and she had perfect clarity. She straightened up as Alex looked down at their joined hands. 

“She was tall, blonde, pretty,” Alex explained, “She seemed your type. I just-I wanted to make you jealous.”

The tectonic plates in her stomach rocketed away from each other now, leaving a vacuum as Maggie’s breath, energy, and belief sapped away. 

“The date was fine. She was nice,” Alex continued, “But I spent the whole night wishing she was you. I only agreed to go out with her again to make you jealous.”

Suddenly, the constant pressure on their fingers eased. The trap slid off, dropped between them and rolled across the floor. The pair rocketed apart in surprise. Retracting her finger, Maggie cracked her sore and stiff knuckle. It felt like she had staved it. 

Alex had turned away, rubbing over her own knuckles. “So…”

“Alex-”

“You will not  _ believe _ the day I’ve had!” a cheery voice called from the doorway. 

They both looked up to see Supergirl bounding in, arms raised. Her crimson boot stepped onto the J’harian object, squishing the pliant material. She stutter-stepped, scooped up the hollow object and fawned.

“Oh! A J’harian truthseeker!” she exclaimed. 

Alex glanced at Maggie, “A what?”

“They’re notorious for being against deceit and lies.” She poked her forefingers into each end, her infectious smile brightening up the dim lab. “Parents on Glob-J’harian use these to teach their kids not to lie. You aren’t truthful and you get stuck until you come clean.”

Supergirl planted the object back on the bench, stole a stray spring roll, and pranced out. 

Alex’s mouth opened and closed, and then she picked at lint on her uniform. “Are you going to the party?”

Maggie glanced at her watch, and realised the time. She peeled the strips off of her nose. “No.”

Alex looked up, expression unreadable, and then reached over to gingerly press against the bridge of Maggie’s nose. “Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore.”

She leaned in but hesitated a breath away. “Are you going to push me away this time?” she whispered.

Maggie closed the gap, pressing their lips together. Both hands now free, she cupped Alex’s jaw as they shared one, two tender kisses. The vacuum in Maggie’s stomach filled with warmth, joy, and as they pulled back, she felt...

_ Merry. _

They stood, both exhaling a long breath as if the entire day they had been holding it. “Where do we go from here?” Alex asked. 

Maggie kept her hands on Alex’s face, gently stroking her cheekbones with her thumbs. She thought about mistletoe, festive songs, rum and bad dancing. 

“Wanna come to the precinct party?”

Alex grinned. “Guess I am getting a kiss under the mistletoe after all.” 

She leaned in to nuzzle their foreheads together. There was a spark of pain, and Maggie pulled back, clutching at the bridge of her nose. 

“What?” Alex asked, alarmed. “We don’t have to go.”

Maggie paused, thinking of the strips, of Priestley tapping her badge and Sally from Narcotics, of her and Alex on their date last night. She imagined wiping the smug grin off Priestley's face by kissing Alex under the mistletoe. 

She grabbed Alex’s hand, pulling her towards the door. 

“To tell you the truth, I wouldn't wanna miss that party for the world.”


End file.
